Paper to Ashes
by Emmeebee
Summary: As Jake and Charles return from making an arrest, they see smoke rising up from behind the precinct.


A/N: I'm a little iffy on the timeline because I've only watched up to season four (along with clips from season five on the official YT channel), but I believe this should be placed after the season five episode 'NutriBoom'.

* * *

Jake was beaming as he and Charles waited for Laura, the infamous watch thief, to step out of the back of the police car. They'd been after her for months as she led them on a merry little goose chase around the city, stealing watches and leaving photos of them in public places to taunt her pursuers. All their leads had turned out to be dead ends, and Jake had begun to fear they would never catch her when, finally, they had a breakthrough. Graphing her crime scenes across a map of the city, Charles had realised there was a district that she never seemed to hit. From there, narrowing down the possible options had been a long, boring, yet oddly simple process.

He was more than a little pleased with himself for finally closing the case. Even if it had been all Charles, really.

Of course, Jake wouldn't be telling anyone about the fact that she'd managed to nab his watch from him while he was handcuffing her. He had it back now, but that did little to help his wounded pride.

"Does anyone else smell smoke?" Laura asked as she straightened up, pausing to sniff the air.

Jake scoffed and took her arm. "That's the oldest trick in the book. You're going to have to do better than that if you want to put one past the – "

Charles looked around. "Actually, I think I do."

"Don't fall for it, Charles! She's just trying to get us to drop our guard so she can steal our watches again."

"Hey, _my_ watch stayed safely on my wrist the entire time," Charles pointed out.

"Yeah, well, that's only because – wait, I can smell it too." Turning in a circle, Jake scanned the surrounding area before stopping when he caught sight of a thin plume of smoke drifting up from behind the precinct. "There! Charles, you stay with her. I'm going to check it out."

Ignoring Charles' protests that they were the police, not the fire department, Jake jogged around the side of the building to the paved back courtyard.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting to find. Someone playing a prank on the Nine-Nine to get revenge, maybe, or a fire from a cigarette that hadn't been put out properly. All he knew was that he _wasn't_ expecting to see his fiancée sitting near a steel drum, a wild look on her face as she whispered, "Burn," every now and again as if she'd taken inspiration from the pyromaniac she'd bagged last month.

"Amy?" Jake asked cautiously. After she'd received word that she'd passed her sergeant's exam with flying colours, he'd expected the obsessive behaviour to stop. Or, at least, to return to normal levels for her. "What are you doing?"

Amy turned to face him, and he was surprised to find that the way the glow of the flames reflected in her eyes was oddly attractive.

He stamped down on that thought. He couldn't afford to be distracted at a time like this.

"Burning my exam notes," she said as if it should be obvious.

Her answer was, if anything, even more uncharacteristic than the sight before him. He'd burnt his old notes before, but that was him, not Amy. "Cool. That's cool. But, ah, what if you need them later?"

The idea of revisiting notes after an exam had never occurred to him before he met Amy, but he'd seen her refer back to them a number of times over the years. While he would never bother keeping them himself, he had come to accept that there were times when they could be useful.

A sheepish expression stole across her face, taking the wildness with it as deftly as Laura could swipe a watch. "They're photocopies," she admitted. "The originals are still in their binders."

"Oh. Good. Wait, no, not good. Way to kill the environment, Amy." Jake paused for a moment before grinning broadly. "But since the damage is already done, we might as well enjoy the fire. Wait here; I'll go tell Charles not to panic."

Ducking back around the corner, he called out, "Charles, it's under control!" before returning to sit beside Amy. "How much of your lunch break do you have left?" he asked. There was no way she would be doing this during work time.

"Ten minutes. It took a while to get everything set up."

"I'll bet." He eyed the steel drum. It didn't look particularly heavy, but its size would have made it awkward to carry. "Was it worth it?"

Her expression contorted into one of sheepish distaste. "Not really. I would go back inside, but it seems like a waste."

"Oh, well," he said, dropping to sit next to her and taking her hand in his, "it's not a waste now."

* * *

A/N: For CrimsonGoldQueen for the Drabble Game Challenge with the prompts 'Jake/Amy' and 'burn'.


End file.
